Contributors: Martha R Alligood and Jacqueline Fawcett

Martha R. Alligood and Jacqueline Fawcett presented the paper, “Follow the Leader: Martha E. Rogers’ Thoughts of Optimism” at the 2025 Society of Rogerian Scholars Hybrid Conference “Inspiring Optimism in Times of Turbulence: A Rogerian Nursing Science Perspective” on October 25, 2025. Our paper was presented virtually, as neither of us was able to attend the conference in person.

Using hermeneutic interpretation, we extracted examples of Rogers’ consistently enthusiastic optimism from three of her publications:

• Rogers, M. E. (1966, June). Nursing’s story. The Educational Violet. New York University.
• Rogers, M. E. (1970). An introduction to the theoretical basis of nursing. F. A. Davis.
• Rogers, M. E. (1992). Nursing science and the space age. Nursing Science Quarterly, 5(1), 27-34. https://doi.org/10.1177/089431849200500108

An example from Rogers’ 1966 publication is:

“For students of nursing the future is a rich repository of far-flung opportunities-around the planet and toward the further reaches of man’s (sic) exploration of new worlds and new ideas.”

Two examples from Rogers’ 1970 publication are:

“Tomorrow’s nurses will be as different from today’s as today’s are from those of ages past” (p. xii).
“For those in nursing who join in exploring the unknown there awaits the joy of discovery” (p. 82).

Two examples from Rogers’ 1992 publication (her last publication prior to her death in 1994) are:

“Human beings are on the threshold of a fantastic and unimagined future. In light of this, the potential for human service is greater than it has ever been before” (p. 34).

The science of unitary human beings portends a new world in space, the next frontier” (p. 34).

A distinctive feature of our presentation is that we did not read the slides that contained the examples of Rogers’ optimism. Instead, the first and last of these slides started with the theme song from the movie, 2001 (Strauss, Richard, Composer. (1896). “Also sprach Zarathustra.“ Opening theme for the movie, 2001. https://archive.org/details/tvtunes_14642}/ ). Prior to showing the first of these slides, we asked the audience to read the content of each slide to themselves.

We appreciated that our presentation was followed by a lively discussion, indicating that the audience was gratified with the focus on optimism.

Our presentation is available to view anytime on the 2025 Society of Rogerian Scholars Conference page. Preview / download our complete presentation below.

About the contributors

Jacqueline Fawcett is a co-founder of Nursology.net, and continues as a leader on the Advisory Team.

Martha Raile Alligood, PhD; RN; ANEF is Professor Emeritus, College of Nursing, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC. Martha holds a diploma in nursing from Good Samaritan School Nursing, Zanesville, OH; a BSN from the University Virginia; a MS from Ohio State University; and a PhD in nursing from New York University, as well as a BSL (sacred literature) from Johnson University in Knoxville, TN. Martha is the editor or co-editor of several editions of Nursing Theorists and their Work and editor of Nursing Theory: Utilization & Application. She has published many reports of her research and theory development and presented this work at many conferences. She also interviewed several nurse theories for Volumes 2 and 3 of video series, The Nurse Theorists: Portraits of Excellence.

Follow the Leader: Martha E. Rogers’ Thoughts of Optimism